[ 2011-12-04 ]

Nigeria bomb blasts kill three
KANO, Nigeria (AFP) - Suspected Islamists on
Sunday bombed two police buildings, two banks and
killed three people, including a policeman and a
soldier in the volatile northern Nigeria's Bauchi
State, residents said.

The attacks by suspected members of the radical
Boko Haram sect, which also seriously injured two
other policemen, happened in the town of Azare and
lasted four hours, they said.

The attackers armed with heavy machine guns, threw
explosives and fired heavy machine guns into a
regional police headquarters and an adjoining
police station in the town, setting fire to the
buildings, residents said.

"They came in a large convoy of cars armed with
heavy machine guns and headed to the police area
command office and bombed it along with the
divisional police station attached to it,"
resident Usman Musa told AFP.

"The attackers left behind a black banner hanging
at the entrance of the police station with the
arabic inscription of 'Allahu Akbar'(God is
Great), which made people suspect they were Boko
Haram," he said.

The attackers also bombed and robbed two banks in
the town, 230 kilometres (140 miles) from the
state capital Bauchi, residents said.

Musa, who was at the federal medical centre where
victims from the attacks were taken said he saw
the bodies of a soldier, a policeman and an errand
boy for the police, while two policemen were being
treated for gunshot wounds.

Another resident Garba Mohammed said two banks
were bombed by the attackers who broke into the
vaults.

"They emptied the banks' safes and made away with
the money," said Mohammed, a dealer in second-hand
clothes.

Mohammed said unexploded bomb canisters littered
the banks' premises and policemen kept curious
residents away while an anti-bomb squad worked to
defuse the explosives.

Boko Haram has been blamed for scores of bomb and
gun attacks in Nigeria in recent months, including
Bauchi where four people were injured last month
when a roadside bomb exploded in the city.

The sect staged a prison raid in September last
year in Bauchi, freeing more than 700 inmates, and
claimed to be behind bomb attacks on an open air
beer garden at a military barracks on May 29 when
President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in.

The sect has also claimed responsibility for the
August suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in
Abuja which killed at least 24 people and
coordinated attacks in the country's northeast on
November 4 that left some 150 people dead.

Source - AFP

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